Exacting Revenge
by Iridian's Legacy
Summary: Chell's new life is satisfactory, but still not complete. When she starts seeing visions of Aperture for the first time in 3 years, and receives an unexpected visit from some loathed rivals, though, it turns horrific. (ON EXTREME HIATUS. POSSIBLE ABANDONMENT.)
1. Chapter 1

**[AN: Reviews are very much apreciated, both positive and negative, but be nice :) enjoy!]**

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><p>It was 6:30 a.m. The alarm blasted the morning news into the feminine ears of the inhabitant in the nearby bed. But she was already awake. The woman was sitting up, cross-legged, with a small laptop between her knees. Without taking her eyes off the screen, she reached over and slapped the OFF button on the alarm, then continued to type. Her fingers moved swiftly over the keyboard, her gray-blue eyes darting across the screen at 100 miles an hour.<p>

There was a moment of silence once she finally forced her fingers to stop, aside from the roar of traffic outside the apartment window. "System; hacked," came in a monotone voice from the computer. The woman slowly smiled and let out a small laugh. She adjusted her white tank top over her yoga pants and put her dark hair up in a loose bun.

"Alright," she sighed, excited. "One more…" She began typing away again. The clock read 6:38 now. Her fingers whizzed over a 3x8 area, entering what felt like thousands of codes at once. Line after line of gold words and hack codes filtered up in the black box on her screen.

The screen flashed red and the box disappeared. An alarm blared through the speakers and in the middle of the screen was one word in bold red letters: DETECTED.

The woman immediately jumped up and let the computer fall to the floor with a bang. She reached into the nightstand and brought out a .22 caliber. One. Two. Three. Four shots. The laptop lay on the floor helplessly, mutilated and broken into hundreds of pieces of glass, metal, and wire.

She ran to a closet and threw the door open, shooting twice the wireless router inside on a chest-high shelf. "Augh!" she yelled, and threw herself upon the wall, pounding and kicking until 3 large dents joined the dozens of others on the yellow canvas.

When she'd finally calmed down, she dressed in some jeans and a sweatshirt and set outside into the January weather.

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><p>"Hey Chell! The usual?" Jay asked.<p>

"How'd you guess?" Chell replied, biting her lip.

"The bruises on your hands." Chell looked down at the result of her assault on the wall. "Ah…"

Jay walked over to a shelf in the back of _Electronica Central_ and grabbed a medium sized blue box containing a router. "Now, _this_ is new. Supposed to be non-traceable and small enough to conceal in a pencil box."

"Why is the box so big then?" Chell asked.

"It's the instruction manual," Jay said, handing it over.

Chell looked it over. "This better be worth the money."

Jay laughed lightly. "Me too. I don't want to be on your next hit list!"

Chell walked over to the laptops. "You _know_ I was kidding about that!"

"Yeah, but it still makes a good story to tell the guys." He hurried back to the register to check out Chell's merchandise, now including a Dell laptop. "Where in the world do you get all this money from?" He knew Chell wouldn't be offended. They'd been real close friends for 3 years.

3 long years of hacking, spamming, and destroying computers that didn't live up to their expectations. Jay was a tall guy, mid 30's, like Chell, with curly brown hair and blue eyes. Someone as handsome as he was didn't belong in an electronics store, according to Chell the first time they met, when she came in looking for her soon-to-be 'usual'.

"None of your business!" She handed seven one hundred dollar bills over the counter. "Where'd you get that new flat screen in your apartment?"

Jay looked up, surprised. "Who told you about that?"

Chell's eyes wandered around the store. "No one. I saw. Yesterday."

Jay slammed the register, pretending to be infuriated. "What were you doing in my apartment, Chell?"

"Jay, _please_. Key under the doormat? I thought you were better than that."

They laughed over this for a while, followed by a quick chat about hacking techniques and when the next Xbox Live competition was.

"So when did you get caught this time?" Jay inquired.

"They got me on the last wall. So close…" her voice trailed off. It was the closest she'd ever gotten to breeching their system. "So close."

For 3 years now, Chell had been trying to hack government databases, searching desperately for information about her family: her dad, her grandparents, cousins, siblings. Anything to clear up her history!— or maybe find someone she could meet and tell her story to.

"You know how much money I would get if I turned you in?" Jay asked. "Like, a lot of big bucks."

"But you won't, because you know _I_ know too much about all the stuff you've done too," Chell said, winking.

"Hey! We could be prison mates or something if we get sentenced to Alcatraz!"

Chell laughed but winced. Prison. That word stung her like sulfuric acid on a third-degree burn. Visions of red lasers, blue bridges, and flying bullets clouded her view. A childish voice echoed, _"Are you still there?"_ in her mind, followed by the maniacal laugh of a woman's almost robotic voice. Orange and blue streaks of light, broiling acid, a chassis and one yellow eye—.

"Chell?" Jay interrupted. "You alright?" Chell whizzed back to reality with a jolt. Jay was leaning to see her eyes, now dilated. "You zoned out there for a second," he said with a forced laugh.

A shiver ran down Chell's spine as she looked around the room, getting a strange feeling that the walls would suddenly open up and tiny white robots would start open-firing on her and her best friend. "Yeah…" she mumbled, still searching the room like a schizophrenic. "Yeah I'm fine. Hey, I got to go. See you later." Without waiting for a goodbye, she rushed out of the store and into the blowing winter wind.

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><p>Chell finally reached her apartment, looking over her shoulder all the way. She hadn't felt this paranoid since… well, not since the elevator door opened and 4 turrets met her, right after she'd been let go from <span>that place<span>.

She fished out her keys and unlocked the door. No. Wait.

She _locked_ the door.

"But I could've sworn…" she began. Her heart started racing. There wasn't anything in the hall she could take to protect herself, so she had to take her chances. She probably just left it unlocked. That's it. That's all it was.

Chell unlocked the door again and slipped inside. The living room and kitchen were in order, just as she'd left them. She breathed a sigh of relief and threw her keys in the bowl by the door. Carrying her merchandise, she made her way to the bedroom. She pushed her door open and dropped the boxes, hearing the laptop and rouder crack.

Facing her, dressed in black, among the raided wreck of her room, the drawers open and clothes ripped out, were three men.

One stepped forward and held out a badge. "Chell Johnson?" he asked, a tone of arrogance and authority in his voice.

"Who wants to know?" Chell asked hesitantly.

"William Wright, _Black Mesa_. You'll need to come with us."

Chell's heart stopped in her chest. The robotic laughter reentered her mind as her gaze locked on the orange _Aperture Science_ testing suit lying crumpled on the floor, revealed from its 8 year old hiding place.

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><p><strong>[AN: I hope to make this a continued story. Again, reviews are appreciated greatly. Tell me what I should try because I am ready to expand my genres and styles. Thank you!] <strong>


	2. Chapter 2

Chell protested for quite some time, but the _Black Mesa_ workers kept pulling out evidence against her, things she forgot were in her own room. They pulled a box full of destroyed computers and rouders out from under her bed. William smirked when he showed her the loaded gun her found in the drawer.

"I wasn't even part of _Aperture_! I don't know what it is!" she finally burst out.

"The suit by your feet says otherwise," a tall ginger worker said.

Chell shrugged. "It was an antique I found at a pawnshop."

"Which one?" William retaliated.

"The one down the street." She moved to a pad of paper and a pen on the nightstand. "Here's the address—"

But before she could even touch the pen, the third guy grabbed her wrist with an iron grip. She gasped and looked at him with a steely glare, trying her best not to show any signs of her deepening fear. The man shook his head and tightened his grip, pulling her up to face him.

"I'm sorry, Miss Johnson, but you'll need to come with us," William said, grinning madly.

A white cloth. The strong chemically smell that made Chell drowsy. The pain shooting through her shoulder as she was slammed against the wall in their struggle. Then… darkness.

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><p>GLaDOS tried to listen closely to the conversation occurring between the intruders. The racket they'd been making was nothing close to the annoying chaos normally made by Chell and her friends when they played video games every Friday night. As irritating as it was, she began to miss it every time an intruder threw something across the room or tried to move the bed again. The Companion Cube's hiding spot four feet within the wall may have been bulletproof, but not soundproof.<p>

Finally, the sound stopped when one of them whispered _shhh_. She waited, anxious and hoping that Chell was going to barge in on the thugs and make them leave. It was her apartment after all. She had rights.

"Chell Johnson?" she heard. _Oh, thank goodness, it _is _her_.

"Who wants to know?" What a stupid answer. Something she would have expected from the Moron.

"William Wright, _Black Mesa_. You'll need to come with us." Silence.

GLaDOS felt a shock run through her chassis. Her emotional processors sent out mixed signals of anger and fear (but mainly fear) while Chell and her invaders began to debate.

"I'm sorry. 'Black what?' And what are you doing in my apartment? I'm calling the police!"

"_Black Mesa_. We have a warrant."

"What is that?"

"A warrant?"

"No! _Bleak Mess Up_."

GLaDOS chuckled to herself, surprisingly, then mentally beat herself for finding something that lunatic said humorous.

The men seemed to be losing patience. Voices grew, things slid out from their hidden places in the room. There were long pauses before Chell answered. This did _not_ look good.

GLaDOS shut off the outgoing microphone and began to swivel around in her chassis, panicking. She started murmuring to herself as she searched her files for a newspaper clipping she'd rejoiced over briefly a year or so ago. Found it.

The title read, "_Black Mesa_ to close **permanently!** Owner has 'No comment'." She _knew_ this article was phony! _Black Mesa_ was relentless in their work; they wouldn't just close so abruptly like that. They must have made a breakthrough and said they were closing so not to draw suspicion. GLaDOS laughed aloud at that thought.

"Idiots," she hissed. "They wouldn't—couldn't—make any kinds of scientific advancement even if they tried."

Through the Companion Cube's microphone came some type of static, then, "Suit by your feet"- chhttt- "Pawn shop"-chhttt-. GLaDOS wirelessly adjusted the signal so must of the static was gone.

"I'm sorry, Miss Johnson, but"-chhttt- The speakers went wild with static.

"Dangit!" GLaDOS exclaimed, the panels around her moving with the syllables. Like mad, she immediately began to adjust satellite positions, sound and microphone quality, deleting anything she thought was lagging or failing to do her will.

And all it took was a second.

That one second of clear sound was all it took for the AI to feel something strange. A quick moment of struggling, coming from the Companion Cube's microscopic microphone, was just enough for the base of GLaDOS's chassis to get a strange stirring feeling. It started at the spot where she disappeared into the ceiling, then gradually made it way to her body. It caused her files to freeze up. All the screens and signals the AI always saw and constantly felt seemed miniscule. The main chamber vanished, and all there was was the world's largest collection of wisdom, and that split second of clean signal from the Companion Cube in Chell's wall.

**Worry** finally made its way to GLaDOS's bright yellow optic, causing her to shake her 'head' and flutter her optic shutters. Worry had been in her before, but not like this. It was always for herself, or her facility. Even when she'd released Chell she was only thankful that the human was okay so she didn't have to go to the trouble of disposing of her body.

She shut off the cube's incoming microphone when nothing more came through. If she had had a mouth it would have been dropped open. The lights around her faded and she didn't say a word, not that there was anyone around to say them to anyway.

This new feeling meant something, even if it _was_ only from her emotional processors.

GLaDOS forced all the screens of the facility to come back into focus and found the one of the Cooperative Testing Initiative bots in the testing hub. They were supposed to be doing an extremely difficult test involving floorless chambers. Atlas was running in circles with a white sphere in hand while P-Body tried to get his head back from him.

"Blue! Orange!" she snapped over the PA. "Stop that! And listen up!" When P-Body finally had his head back, they went to the nearest camera and saluted her.

"Proceed to the disassembly machine," she ordered. "Take your Dual Portal Devices with you." They collected their portal guns, lying in a corner, and headed to two glass tubes, colored orange and blue.

GLaDOS focused on another screen as they got disassembled. A sign above a large iron door read 'Cryogenic Storage'. She sighed and turned to the screen that showed the room's inhabitants. Going through their files, she finally found two suitable subjects that might be enough to carry out her plans. A man and a woman. She moved them to separate medical wards.

The super computer transferred Atlas's and P-Body's parts to the medical wards, and after checking that everything was in proper and working condition, she set to work.

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><p>Chell woke up in a dark room, lying on a metal platform in the corner. Despite that sheet that covered the surface under her, she was freezing.<p>

"Hello?" she whispered. Her vision was blurry and her limbs sore. Then remembering what happened she shouted, "Hey! Let me out!" But her voice just bounced back at her in the small metal room and she covered her ears.

Chell blinked rapidly, trying to clear her vision. She could hardly move her legs, and she thought for her moment that she might've been cripple.

"Is anyone there?" she asked again, much softer this time. She didn't really expect and answer. The one time she spoke in _Aperture,_ she complained and stared down a camera in a ridiculous testing chamber for 30 minutes. As soon as she gave up and started moving again, GLaDOS spoke over the PA, 'Please proceed into the testing area so science may continue.'

Her thoughts suddenly drifted to the Companion Cube, hiding in her wall back home. She began to want it more than ever now. She'd built it that sanctuary when she had made friends with Jay. She felt she didn't need it anymore, now that she had real companions (who would talk back), but didn't have it in her heart to get rid of it. It served as her only company in her early years at _Aperture_, and Chell had done the same. Who else would give it love?

Chell began to move, slowly but surely, and sat up to look around. A single LED light in the ceiling, the size of a dinner plate, was all the light she was given to make out a 5 by 8 foot black outline on the far wall. She looked closer…

Light: ever so faint, but there was definitely a thin stream of light filtering through the cracks. Chell managed to stand. Her legs felt like twigs and as soon as she stood, her head imploded, clouding her vision again. _What did they _give _me?_ she thought, reaching up to rub her temples. Supporting herself or the wall, Chell moved over to the opposite side and peered through the crack.

BANG!

Next thing Chell knew she was flat on her back, holding the right side of her face. There was a sound like the release of pressure, then a click, and the turning of gears. She pulled her hand away to see a thick red liquid all over her palm. Blood. It ran from her nose and trickled down to her ear until she sat up.

The panel that knocked her over was gradually rising up, like a panel that would open up in momentum tests at _Aperture_. Light flooded in and bathed her so she could see her apparel. She was wearing a black jumpsuit with a _Black Mesa_ logo printed on the chest.

_Oh no,_ she thought. "No no no no no." The panel was up all the way now and beginning to slide back into the wall horizontally. Chell wished it had stayed put, because facing her on the opposite side of the window was William Wright.

Dressed in a white lab coat, with a few others present who were taking notes on clipboards, he set his hands on a table in front of him and leaned down to a microphone. "Welcome, Miss Johnson. I hope you will forgive us of first impression. We're not monsters, I assure you. Oh, and we took the liberty of giving you a more suitable set of clothes if you hadn't noticed. Appropriate for the occasion, don't you agree?"

"I had noticed," Chell answered, filled with disgust and loathing, as she stood up.

"Anyway, this is how this is going to work. You'll do as we say, give us all we need, and cooperate in any other requests we have, and we won't hurt you anymore."

"What about letting me go?"

William smirked mockingly. "I didn't say anything about that."

The door to the room William was in opened and closed, out of view. He smiled widely and turned back to Chell. "Would you like to meet the brains of this mission? The one who told us about you?" he asked.

"_Please,_" Chell said through gritted teeth.

Into view came a tall man of about 25 years of age. He had short sandy blonde hair with light skin and pink lips, and an almost wicked smile. His bright blue eyes locked on Chell and flickered. He tapped on the window.

"Hello? Anyone in there?" he mused in a potent British accent; the first human-like voice Chell had heard in _Aperture Science_. Chell stumbled backwards and gasped.

"Wh—Whea—" she stammered.

His smile changed to one of pleasure.

"'Ello, luv."

**[AN: PLEASE tell me if I went out of character. I know I may have with Wheatley but I'm going somewhere with it, believe me. Reviews are appreciated and thank you!]**


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